Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS)

The Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) swept through Asia in 2003, wreaking human devastation in its wake and affecting the lives of millions of people. As the SARS epidemic fades into memory in the West, Asian countries continue to grapple with its legacy. Nowhere is this fact truer than in China, whose initial attempts to conceal the epidemic may well have contributed to its far-flung reach. The government's inability to maintain the cover-up, it's very public purge of officials, and the subsequent opening of the media that occurred, were all important steps on the road to a more open political system. It is apparent in the author's view, the Chinese government's lack of acknowledgement notwithstanding, that the SARS epidemic will have a significant impact on the nation's political system. This impact will be felt in the long-run, however, and not immediately. Some international observers have pointed to the SARS epidemic as "China's Chernobyl," believing that it will lead to widespread political upheaval and democratization. Others believe that China's existing political system will be able to co-opt and absorb whatever impact is generated and remain as monolithic as it is today. I believe that both of these interpretations do not fully capture the nuances of the issue and are inaccurate. The SARS epidemic, and the Chinese government's ham-handdd attempts to address it, have put in motion forces which, in the short term, the government will attempt to conta

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he retired head of China's premier military hospital, Jiang Yanyong, publicly contradicted the government when he declared that he knew of at least 120 cases three military hospitals (Pomfret, April 9, 2003). The floodgates began to open with the retired hospital head's pronouncement, and soon dozens of officials and doctors began to leak information about the extent of the SARS epidemic to the international press (Bork). On April 16, 2003, the WHO took the unprecedented step of directly criticizing the Chinese government. In a news conference, WHO researchers said that China had misled the public about the spread of SARS. The researchers declared that China was underreporting the number of SARS cases and was maintaining secret military files that made it impossible to monitor and control the spread of the virus in Beijing (Pomfret, April 17, 2003). It was by all accounts a humiliating public rebuke by a respected international institution that typically refrains from publicly criticizing its member states (Fidler 97). On April 16, the very same day as the incendiary press conference, WHO investigators had been allowed into the military hospitals for the first time. Two days later, Time magazine published an expose of t

Category: Medical - S